From Zombos' Closet

Dracula (1931) Bela Does It Best

ZC Note: I first posted this in 2007. If you haven't seen Bela as Dracula yet (where the hell have you been?) this review does contain spoilers.

Zombos Says: Classic

It seemed the whole room was filled with mist. Then I saw two red eyes glaring at me, approaching quickly, giving way to a livid face contorted into the gravest mask of terror. It was only Zombos.

"For god's sake, hide me!" he cried.

"Daddos, where are you daddos? You've got a dance question." Zombos Jr was getting closer.

"Playing High School Musical the DVD Board Game, I see," I said, applying more steam to the corpse plants. I had been enjoying the warm, pleasant quiet of the solarium as it filled with mist, attending to my botanical chores. Warm, pleasant, moments never last, do they?

"I don't know why Zimba ever got him that hellish game!" Zombos frantically looked about the room for a hiding place.

"Try behind the bench over there," I pointed. For a man his age, he did move fast when given sufficient reason.

Perhaps I should mention I recommended the game to Zimba. It did make such a wonderful Christmas gift for Zombos Jr; the little fellow simply can't get enough of it.

Zombos Jr came running into the room.

"Did you see my daddos?"

Before I could answer, Zombos sneezed loud enough to wake the dead.

"There you are!" He gleefully ran to Zombos and hustled him out of the room. Zombos let out a moan of despair that followed him all the way up the stairs and down the east hall to the playroom. Wait a minute; I mistakenly told him to hide behind the bench next to the orchids. Silly me, the man’s terribly allergic to them. How could I have forgotten? I turned back to my duties, pondering on another pair of red eyes glaring through dark mist, deep into the dead of night.

The year was 1931. Universal Studios had originally planned a big budget movie, more along the lines of 1923's The Hunchback of Notre Dame and 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, but the Great Depression squelched those plans. Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces and master of extreme characterizations, was onboard to star in Dracula, playing both the titular vampire and Van Helsing, the titular vampire's nemesis. Chaney succumbed to a throat hemorrhage before production began, leaving director and creative partner, Tod Browning, disappointed and disheartened.

Other names were bandied about to replace him, including Conrad Veidt, but only one person was born to play the role of the undead count: Bela Lugosi. Say what you will about the shortcomings of Browning's movie, it’s Lugosi's performance as the aristocratic count of corrupting evil that has defined the sartorial look, voice, and mannerisms of Bram Stoker's Dracula ever since. Lugosi was and still is Dracula, down to his hypnotic stare, sensual cape swirl, and suave malice and upper-class pretentions.

Amazingly, Lugosi, who had starred in the smash stage play Dracula, by Hamilton Deane and later John L. Balderston, had to fight fang and nail for the movie role. The expatriate Hungarian actor whose singular, syllabic voice was both a blessing for playing the blood-thirsty count, and a curse for most of his other roles, took less pay then his fellow actors to get the part. Yet, it’s his performance that has provided horrorheads everywhere with undying dreams of immortality, and punsters with a Google's worth of Lugosi-like enunciations.

Lugosi took Dracula seriously, even though Browning may not have.

Cinema historians and fans have written and debated much on the movie's immobilized camerawork, long silent pauses, dialog-weighted pacing after we leave Transylvania, and a stifling confinement to the play's drawing-room set-pieces, with mostly Lugosi's performance making it all worthwhile. In every one of his endeavors, from B-movie to Poverty Row quickie, he never acted down to the material. And while the Spanish version of Dracula, filmed concurrently at night and on the same sets, may be technically superior to Browning's version, the overly melodramatic acting of Carlos Villarias as Conde Dracula is distracting.

Beginning with what would become the signature Gothic-neverworld of Universal; frightened villagers, dreary mist-shrouded landscapes, and expansive interior sets awash with ominous shadows and portents of supernatural danger, poor Renfield (Dwight Frye) doesn't know what he's in for as he heads to Castle Dracula to deliver the lease for Carfax Abbey to its new owner, Count Dracula—on Walpurgis Night, no less. Ignoring the pleas of the villagers not to go, he hops in a coach to make a midnight rendezvous with another that will take him the rest of the way.

The rendezvous with Count Dracula’s coach, pulled by black horses, in the mist-shrouded forest at midnight is foreboding. Renfield barely gets his feet on the ground before the frightened driver who brought him throws his bag down and whips his horses into a gallop to get away. Dracula himself is the driver of the waiting coach. Cinema historian David Skal points out how the scene as written differs from how it was filmed, leading to an anomaly.

In the script, Dracula has his face covered so only his piercing eyes can be seen by Renfield. On film, Dracula's face is not hidden. Renfield can clearly see him, but at the castle he doesn't realize his mysterious host was also his silent coachman. Or perhaps Dracula simply mesmerized him?

Dracula greets him in the cavernous hall of the castle. Renfield sheepishly walks toward the great stone staircase while Dracula slowly descends it, with both framed and dwarfed by the decaying battlements and desolation. The censors wouldn't allow rats to be shown so Browning chose armadillos instead, hoping they’d be creepy enough. They are. He even has a fat vampire bug crawl out of its tiny coffin, which is more odd than creepy. The art direction by Charles D. Hall, combined with Karl Freund’s cinematography generates eeriness and an underlying and indeterminate dread we sense as well as Renfield.

Hall would go on to helm the memorable art direction in Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, while Freund continued casting ominous shadows in his brooding camera work in Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mummy.

The howling of wolves prompts Dracula to wax poetic as he implores Renfield to "Listen to them…the children of the night…what music they make." Renfield, not quite sure what to make of all this, haltingly follows the count, who effortlessly passes through a large spider web blocking the stairs.

At this point, I'd be running down the stairs, but Renfield shirks it off and uses his walking stick to open a path through the enormous web. He follows his creepy host to a comfortable room, cheerily lit by a crackling fireplace. Greatly relieved, he even mentions how cheery it is.

It’s as cheery as the movie gets.

Before you can say " I don't drink...wine," Renfield is drugged, tapped out of a pint or two of blood, and turned into a raving lunatic who eats flies and fat juicy spiders for their life's fluid. In an energetic performance that would typecast him, Dwight Frye vividly illuminates the pain, pathos, and sinful pleasure of Dracula's questionable "gift" of immortality. His near feverish ravings contrast sharply with Lugosi's studied, methodical performance, setting the tone for every mad doctor's assistant to come.

Unfortunately, the movie leaves its momentum at the Borgo Pass in Transylvania when Dracula and Renfield sail to London aboard the Vesta. As Skal notes, the shooting script had scenes involving Lugosi baring fangs and attacking the Vesta's crew like some all-you-can-eat seafood smorgasbord. In the movie, the budget and censors took their toll, along with Browning's seeming disinterest, and the Vesta’s voyage is a short run of herky-jerky stock footage from a previous silent movie. Except for one chilling scene in which Renfield laughs and glares maniacally from the ship's cargo hold as he’s discovered when the ship drifts into port, the voyage is not a highpoint it could have been. A movie long in development hell called the Last Voyage of the Demeter aims to capitalize on this shortcoming. (Demeter is the name of the Russian schooner carrying Dracula to England in Bram Stoker’s novel.)

While the ponderously static drawing-room scenes slow momentum,  the tete-a-tete between Dracula and Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan), and Renfield's more colorfully lucid moments between raving insanity and pitiable remorse, give sufficient animus to the proceedings to hold attention.

This character-driven intensity is lost in the Spanish version. For instance, Carlos Villarias’ Dracula clumsily uses a walking-stick to smash a mirror box that betrays him, diluting the defining confrontation between him and Van Helsing with bug-eyed theatrics. In comparison, Sloan’s Van Helsing quietly tricks Dracula into viewing the box just before he reveals the mirror. Realizing he’s been outwitted, Lugosi’s Dracula smashes the box to the ground with his bare hand while jumping back, his hatred and contempt burning through the short distance between them. Van Helsing calmly strokes his chin as if he’s conducting an experiment. Lugosi's feral glare turns to an apology as he regains composure. He gives Van Helsing a parting compliment to his cunning and a warning, noting how Van Helsing’s not lived even a single lifetime.

Renfield's vexing ability to roam freely around Dr. Seward's house provides humor and energy, enlivening what would otherwise be dialog-heavy situations. Frye alternates Renfield through bouts of ecstasy and damnation as he obediently, and at times unwillingly, helps Dracula get to Mina (Helen Chandler). His description of the thousands of rats with red eyes, shown to him by Dracula as a future reward, would have been an incredible scene if the censors and budget had allowed it.

I've seen Dracula many times over the years, but never noticed the large piece of cardboard placed next to the lamp in Mina's room until more astute viewers wondered at why this mysterious, ragged piece of paper is visible in the scene. Cinema historians and fans differ in their opinions: is it a mistake, having been used to diffuse lighting for a certain camera angle and forgotten? or is it there as part of the script, purposely positioned by Dr. Seward (Herbert Bunston) to keep the harsh lamp light out of Mina’s eyes so she could sleep? Either way, it’s a testament to Lugosi's riveting performance that it usually remains unnoticed in the background.

The current consensus on Tod Browning’s directorial involvement is that he didn't direct much of the movie, but left it to Karl Freund, whose talents as a cinematographer were exceptional, and more adequate than his directorial abilities. I wonder what kind of movie Dracula would have been with Lon Chaney playing the parts of the undead count and his astute, unwavering nemesis Van Helsing. Would Browning have realized a different vision? Would Chaney have used his incredible make-up talents to fashion a more horrific Dracula than Max Shrek's in Nosferatu? If so, would he have been more or less effective than Lugosi's more socially mobile, suave, and seductive vampiric aristocrat?

While no longer scary—given today's desensitized audiences, not much is—Dracula still remains an iconic and important movie in the pantheon of horror cinema due to its initial art direction, and the eternal performances of Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye, and Edward Van Sloan. As Universal’s first talking horror movie, it set the tone for a new style of terror, creating generations of undying fans to come.

Rock, Paper and Scissors (2019) All in the Family

Zombos Says: Good (Though it unfolds like a slow pull on a rubber band that's suddenly let go).

Macarena Garcia Leniz and Martin Blousson's Rock, Paper and Scissors is a psychological horror movie. It unfolds like a long group session with a distracted therapist where little backstory tidbits play out in the current moments as the patients act up for attention, with both past and present thoughts mixed together as if they were one and the same. The pacing can be slow for Americans who are used to fast food cinema, but the performances razor-line on a mounting sense of odd behaviors, and the slow pull on a rubber band storyline builds the tension and guesswork as to who is being truthful and who isn't, then suddenly snaps when let go toward the end. Warning! One scene made me close my eyes. It happens with little forewarning. You may need to close your eyes, too. It brings new meaning to the saying "if the shoe fits."

In this story there are three patients: Jesus ( Pablo Sigal), Maria Jose (Valeria Giorcelli),  and Magdalena (Agustina Cervino), and their group session begins when Magdalena pays a visit after a long absence.  Unfortunately for Magdalena, she doesn't fully know what she's in for. Their father has died and she has come to put the estate in order and sell off shared assets like the house that Jesus and Maria have isolated themselves in. Of course, Magdalena's unexpected arrival is not really welcomed, but they smile and invite her in. The relationship between the three becomes more ominous and more convoluted the longer she stays: and worsens when she can't leave.

I saw the word "masterful" used in some of this movie's reviews I've glanced over. That's one word that really needs to be stricken from the lexicon of critics and reviewers. It has little meaning or weight anymore due to pandering misuse. The direction here is not masterful, it is carefully measured. So much so that you don't realize the subtle shifts going back and forth in the relationships between Magdalena and Jesus, Magdalena and Maria, and Jesus and Maria. Perhaps the oddest relationship is between Jesus and Maria, but it is disrupted as Magdalena struggles to find a way out of her suddenly dire situation as Jesus is helpful at first, but begins to fixate on his home movie. A weird movie that has Maria dressing up as Dorothy Gale and treating a little furry animal as Toto.

With the three of them wrapped tightly into this small world of rooms and eccentricities, the story relies heavily on their interactions, us inferring their intentions, and the sudden twists taking place as each struggles to remain the same or to escape. Oddball snippets of Jesus' movie  appear as the story develops along troubling moments. Maria is endlessly watching The Wizard of Oz, imagining herself to be Dorothy Gale, and even dressing up as that little girl from Kansas, waiting to be whisked away to Oz. Jesus fixates on making his version of the movie, but Magdalena's arrival and subsequent stay has him putting her into the movie too, much to Maria's annoyance. But is she annoyed? Is Jesus really the saner person in the house? Or perhaps a better question is who is the craziest?

A turn for the worse happens when Dorothy's ruby slippers are too small for Magdalena to wear as she is pushed into the role. I say Dorothy's slippers because the meaning behind them revolves around being able to leave the closed-off world of Jesus and Maria. A turn for the worse happens when Jesus pulls out a rifle, seemingly annoyed that his movie cannot be completed as he wants it to be when Maria rethinks her relationship with him and his movie and where her home really lies. 

For the story we see there is little backstory given, though it is implied from the long absence of Magdalena, the stifling home that Jesus and Maria have sequestered themselves in, and the death of their father. They may like to play games, but their preference had been for only two players. Having a third to contend with changes the rules of the game, making who wins a matter of life or death.

Army of the Dead (2021) Not Taking Care of Business

Zombos Says: watchable, but not memorable. 

"Look, I'm just saying that every time Snyder drops a load it's like fanboy nirvana minus substance to some. To others, his ass must be red from all the ass-kissing he gets when he spends millions of dollars and stretches time beyond normal physics in a way Einstein would have been proud." 

I finished and looked at Paul Holstenwall (see Neon Maniacs). He looked back at me. His eyes narrowed, his mouth was puckering. Any minute he'd have his riposte to my criticism of Army of the Dead, yet another zackstravagance from Zack Snyder, the director many of us either love or hate or dream about, but fanboys simply swoon over with glee. Paul was consummately a fanboy.

"But there's a zombie tiger!" Paul grasped. Shiny stuff tends to distract him.

"So what? He doesn't do anything with it! It's like he told the CGI guys we need some shiny stuff. I know, let's have a zombie tiger!" I barely contained myself. "Oh, and obviously he took notes from Will Smiths's I am Legend, revamped it a little and filled in the dead time with zombie-like mutants that go all tribal primitive and grunt a lot." The only fun aspect of this is he plopped them down in Las Vegas. Oh, wait a minute, didn't Resident Evil: Extinction kick some sand around in Las Vegas too with primitive zombie-mutants? Granted their budget was a wee bit smaller so more sand than glitz, but hell, Paul, the movie's a rehash of stuff we've seen before, and so so, again and again, my eyes watered."

I sipped my Jack and Coke and leaned back. Paul took a long draw from his Screwdriver--his third one by the way--and leaned forward. Chef Machiavelli entered the room pushing  a dessert cart filled with apple pie and rich, dark chocolate scones. He took one look at the situation and wheeled it between the two of us and hastily left. One of the perks of Zombos' mansion was an excellent chef,  followed by another perk of having the best stock of bottled inebriation on Long Island. If Paul kept up his enthusiasm for this, yet another, Snyder-snickle (the pickle kind, that is), round two of our discussion would need a stronger malt whiskey to see me through. 

"Wasn't there anything you liked about the movie?" asked Paul, grabbing a scone in one hand while drinking his screwdriver in the other. He was finally coming to his senses. Or maybe leaving them, which would be a good thing, too, in his case. 

"Well, let's see. Yes. First, the cheeky opening credits montage led us into thinking he was going for a Zombieland tongue in cheek approach...but then the movie changed to a more serious tone, so no, that's not it." I took a piece of apple pie while I stalled. This was going to be harder than I thought. 

"Okay, the characters were well chosen with solid actors to back them up (Dave Bautista, Tig Notaro, Ella Purnell, Theo Rossi, and the bunch of them). No one does snark the way Tig does. And for hulking presence, sort of like a Hostel Yogi Bear, there's Bautista's physical gravitas. You don't know when to duck where he's concerned and that's off-setting and tension-building. Of course, having great talent to work with and then doing nothing much with them but a graphic novel's worth of window-dressing and cliché's, that's a blown opportunity. Either the movie needed more solid backstory in a shorter amount of time or Netflix should have gone with a limited series to allow for less montage, more backstory, more meaty events to take place in the fight for survival. Sure, the visual look and feel of the movie is all casino gloss, but when you roll the story dice, it's just shamblers, faster shamblers, and higher functioning mutants pissing their turf boundaries. Even Garret Dillahunt's Martin is the usual inside man you know will do wrong. Those sunglasses are a dead giveaway he's going to be trouble."

Zombos popped his head into the library and saw Paul was still with us. 

"Come on in," I said. Yes, I was desperate. Zombos always managed to disappear when Paul visited the mansion. Zombos made a funny sawing motion with his hand across his throat and quickly poofed into thin air again before Paul turned his head.

"You just don't like Snyder's knack for giving an audience what they want to see," said Paul. He was definitely over the limit on screwdrivers and scones. I pushed the dessert cart out of his reach with my foot. 

"That's quite true. I fully agree with you. If you're going to put zombies in Las Vegas, you better come up with a better kickstart than the it's so old it's got saggy balls, dog-eared, military super-soldier experiment gone horribly wrong or infected soldier gone horribly wrong. And oops! We let it loose because we needed to, to have a story, so its maximum security container is really a tin can easily dented. One wonders how they got Zeus (Richard Cetrone) into that tin can to begin with? He's smart enough to wear a bullet-deflecting face mask? You'd hope he'd be more of a problem for them as they work on getting into the casino, cracking that incredibly complex safe, and getting out with millions of dollars that must be awfully heavy to carry."

I reached for a scone.

"And another thing, why is it always so easy to crack a super-safe by some person on the team? I mean, this should have been more mission impossible than let's mind our turf and Zeus will mind his and we'll get in and out like aces. One more thing: Snyder wouldn't know how to cheer things up if his life depended on it. Everything is doom and gloom and his characters may start out in different ways, but they always end up with the short end of the stick. Would it kill him to make a happier movie at least once?"

I sipped my drink and realized Paul was out cold on the couch. Probably dreaming about the next Snyder movie, he had a smile on his face. If only the rest of us could be so lucky. Here's something really scary: what if he comes out with a director's cut of Army of the Dead that's four hours long.  Once he's infected Netflix, lord knows what will happen. 

The 100 Hundred Candles Game (2020)

Zombos Says: Fair to Good (the wrap around story for this anthology movie is lifeless, but the seven stories are bloody good).

If you have seen Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters (1968), you know what the 100 Candles title is referring to. It was a Japanese parlor game (hyakumonogatari kaidankai), circa samurai age-ish, that involved arranging two or three rooms so they appeared like an L if you walked through them. Up to 100 persons could play, but I am not sure that ever happened, unless an entire village joined in. Each person, in turn, would tell a ghost story. Or curse story. Or monster story. As each story was told a light would be extinguished (hence the 100 candles or the original andon lanterns used back then). As each light was extinguished and a new story begun, the rooms would get darker and, presumably, a lot more creepy.

So the Japanese, who brought us the dark, long-haired J-horrors of our cinema nightmares, learned the craft of scaring the bejezus out of anyone hundreds of years ago by creating a mood and a sense of mounting dread. The trick was not to tell those 100 stories. The participants feared that if you reached the 100th story, terrors might be unleashed that were slowly building up as each story was finished, and each villager was quietly positioning themselves closer and closer to the exit just in case all hell broke lose. Now that is a game. Kind of like our contemporary haunt attractions, it relied on scary vignettes and mood lighting. 

Sadly, that overall mood and tension is not to be found in 100 Candles.

Part of that lies with the actors in the wrap around story. They are supposed to be friends, but none of them are friendly and the game's host (Magui Bravi) least of all. One wonders why they all gathered together in the first place. More context and lead-in would have helped a great deal. Why are they playing the game? No one was having fun, not even before they started. No one seemed to have a reason for being there to play the game. None of the emotions on display indicated they even liked each other. An explanation of the game was more detailed than the characters playing it. After that explanation, we are into the first story about a witch that eats kids. It is short and sweet but could make for an entire movie with a fleshed out script.

The next story involves a domestic dispute and a twist-ending, followed by an unsettling but confusing sojourn into demonic children. A demon-haunted mother, a woman waking up in a coffin, a demonic possession, and a nasty habit concerning taking pictures with a cell phone round out the remaining scares.

The stories themselves are good and creepy and while fairly traditional in execution, have an earnest taste for blood and horror. But the wrap around story jostles with them uncomfortably. Eventually the wrap around reaches its climax but since we did not learn much about the game's participants we really do not care too much about them or what happens to them. 

If you take away the wrapper, the horror candy inside is strong and visually arresting, so I recommend you watch this movie and fast forward through the game's participants as they stiffly dialog their growing concerns about the game (but never just leave), and watch the seven stories instead; which makes this a perfect on-demand view, so go at it. 

Note: As always, I receive screeners, links, courtesy copies, etc., for some of my reviews. But I still review 'em as I see 'em. So there.

Undergods (2020) Gothic Sci Fi Horror for the Arthouse Crowd

Zombos Says: Good for film students, arthouse audiences, and anyone looking to think about and question an intentionally deep and confusing movie.

IMDb lists Undergods by Chino Moya as a thriller and fantasy. That is misleading. Perhaps a clue to what Moya intended is found in the glimpse of a book by E.T.A Hoffman, being read by one of the characters. The movie's use of colors, pacing, and decay across the stories in this anthology also point to a tone and mood that leans to the gothic and horror. There is also the sci fi element that directs Moya's odd editing and intentional obfuscation as he bounces us back and forth in time between post-apocalypse and pre-apocalypse. This movie is not one you would normally want to watch but it is worth watching.

There is a lot buried in the stories here but this is not a mainstream film. I would expect it to be a cult favorite in due time, good for midnight viewings with more action-packed fare or a go-to film for student studies. Oh, and the thriller part of it is completely wrong: Undergods is neither thrilling or suspenseful; it merely lays out a narrative that could use some time-trimming from its 90 or so minutes run-time. You will probably lose attention at the 68 minute mark or thereabout, but stick with it. The direction and editing keep actions muted but the actors intense. Either Moya knows how to direct actors or knows how to stay out of their way, but the acting takes the foreground in every scene, usually overwhelming the dystopian facades it takes place in.  

 

"Wait a moment," said Zombos. I looked up from my review-writing.

"You are getting a bit long winded here with academic back alleys," he said.

This is why I hate writing movie reviews when he's around. He's a critic of the critic type of person. That can be very annoying.

I stood my ground. "I'm simply outlining my impressions of the movie. I had to sleep on this, you know, to figure out how to approach it when it uses final poster art that's not even about the movie. That girl standing in the decaying ruins of a post-apocalypse while a truck drives toward her is way off the mark. At least I think it is. Now you've got me all mixed up thinking about it. Can you let me get back to my review please?" 

Zombos sipped his Aberlour and squinted his eyes at me. I got the feeling he was mentally holding two fingers up in front of his eyes and squeezing my head between them. I shook that feeling aside and continued my review. Come to think of it, the male characters in Undergods were all being squeezed. I wonder if that was intentional too.

 

The time-shifting begins with two buddies (Johann Myers and Geza Rohrig) driving a grimy truck through an urban wasteland of decaying buildings and rotting bodies. They collect the bodies but why? Who is paying them? They also drink gasoline (unleaded I hope), so their mental acuity is questionable. With a lot of time on their hands, they chat, tell stories, share dreams. Cue the first story and time shift to, I'm guessing here, the recent past, to an apartment complex that's empty except for an older couple in one apartment and one tenant locked out of his apartment. Or so he said. Ned Dennehy (he played Scrooge in Dickensian 2015) is the locked out tenant. They invite him in. I would not invite him in. Dennehy has a look that is not inviting. As it turns out, not a good look for the tenants either. An elevator provides the transition to... 

...the next story, which involves a rich man (Eric Godon) who wants to become richer, a daughter (Tanya Reynolds) he adores, and a creepy genius (Jan Bivjoet) who wants to sell his architectural plans. Strangely, this story is told by a father telling his daughter a bedtime story, which is even more strangely being told by one of the questionable sanitation guys picking up bodies and drinking gasoline.  Again, I'm guessing here, but it would fit the fantasy element as Moya kicks around the point of view for us like an empty can. He definitely wants to play with us here, with timeframes, with the people in those timeframes, and the social malaise those people are swimming in. Is he saying these characters are why the apocalypse happened, in general? A society in decline? Or are we still inside the heads of those two buddies as they shoot the breeze? 

A door forced open later leads to a loopy time wrap from past to present to past, making for a very jarring entrance into those two buddies' world consisting of an endless and mostly dead cityscape of ruins. From there, the final story embraces a more colorful world but one of emotional emptiness for the people living in it. A perplexing return of a formerly "dead" husband (Sam Louwyck) makes it a problem for the current one (Adrian Rawlins). There's well-placed dark humor here, especially with the letters the disconnected and disaffected son puts on his bedroom wall, as if he had to be reminded of what those letters spell out. A karaoke rendition makes for a very uncomfortable scene and is the only heated one allowed in the movie. A deeply disturbing but telling (and darkly funny) visit to a social worker makes this story the most perplexing but inherently understandable one of the bunch.

And so the two buddies continue driving for bodies and fresh meat. I'll leave the fresh meat part of it up to you to discover. We may all fall into that category soon enough, but soylent green it ain't.

 

Zombos took the last sip of his Aberlour, looked down at my review, sighed, and left the room. A reaction, I'm sure, most viewers will have after this movie. But it is one hell of a ride, with emphasis on the hell. Oh, and the techno soundtrack is awesome.

Havenhurst (2016) Movie Review

Zombos Says: Good (But an extreme gore effect is jarringly unexpected)

Movies about dwelling places holding dark secrets, hidden passageways, and maniacal intentions are the no-brainers of the horror genre. Just think of Crawlspace (1986), or The People Under the Stairs (1991), or Thir13en Ghosts (2001). Such places take on an horrific character all their own, and a good movie or book presents that character foremost in as many scenes or chapters as possible.

Of course, visually speaking, for a movie it's relatively easy. Just spend as much time as you can in the endless hallways, the old apartments, and that stifling basement you don't want to find yourself in. That will do the trick. Havenhurst has all of that, and old fixtures, the quiet rooms, the spooky closets, and the permanent and transitory residents one would need for the terrors to begin. And a very, very, slow elevator when your dying for speediness. And a dungeon-like basement waiting for you if you misbehave.

Jackie (Julie Benz) takes up residence at the stuffy and musty Havenhurst apartment building after her rehabilitation from her addiction to alcohol. She has been a neglectful and self-destructive mother (we learn that from her fitful nightmares), but she is aiming for a fresh start with the help of her detective friend, Tim (Josh Stamberg), and her counselor who referred her to Havenhurst (wink, wink; hard to say if he is on the up and up here, but I sense a sequel may address that).

She takes up residence in her missing friend's spacious, but oddly suffocatingly close, apartment. Her friend, Danielle (Danielle Harris in a brief appearance before she disappears), has left all her photographs and antique cameras behind. Jackie suspects foul play. Jackie soon realizes Havenhurst is full of foul play. Cue the terror. Director and writer Andrew C. Erin, along with Daniel Farrands co-writing, are not too sure in how they play that foul terror, though. Not so much a mystery, not so much a slasher, not so much a gorehound delight, but a little bit of each moves the story along. Some of the movie posters show Jed (Douglas Tait), a mushroomy-skinned denizen of the hidden passageways, trapdoors, and sudden long drops to the basement, so not much mystery there. Hint! He is dressed a bit like a Hostel hosing-it-down man doing superintendent work in his spare time. So we know Jed's role in all of this right off the bat.

His brother, Ezra (Matt Lasky) is the building's handyman. He is good at cleaning up Jed's bloody messes. Both of them are dutiful sons to Eleanor (Fionnula Flannagan). She runs the building and decides who stays or gets evicted. After Jackie takes a drink too many, there is an understated scene where Eleanor goes to a large antique cabinet, opens it to reveal dozens of pegged apartment keys, and reverses the one to Jackie's apartment. That's when you notice a few other keys had already been flipped over, just like Jackie's. Needless to say, you don't want to be like Jackie, and those others, and have your key reversed in that big old cabinet.

A hidden door in the laundry room (yes, me too! I hate creepy laundry rooms with hidden doors.) is revealed, as are the surprisingly versatile hallways and walls, in the photographs Danielle had left behind. Jackie investigates, get's her detective friend involved, and befriend's Sarah (Belle Shouse), a foster child who has her own secret room to hide from her foster parents. Sarah's parents eventually get evicted too, and that's where the gore kicks in. It seems out of place in this Gothic chiller and the camera stays too long admiring it. But soon the running away from Jed begins and the family that slays together is revealed, giving explanation to the building's unique luxury-to-die-for features.

The ending is a bummer as it clearly is done to set up the franchise for Jed and the building's future apartment dwellers. But there is more to tell about Havenhurst, so hopefully we will see the sequel soon. That deadly family tradition needs further exploration and I'm very curious to know what Jed does in his spare time. When he's not butchering tenants.

A courtesy screening link was provided for this review.

The Boy (2016) Movie Review

Zombos Says: Good

Beautifully filmed and with a brooding country mansion harboring dark secrets, The Boy doesn't pack an emotional wallop from intense scares or mind-numbing body counts, but what you will find in this gentle-gothic, that borrows much from other horror movies, is a simple treat of creepiness and mystery.

Lauren Cohan plays an American, Greta Evans, traveling to the Heelshire's family estate in the United Kingdom. It's an old, large, stuffy, and filled with hunting tweediness and wood trimmings kind of mansion, forgotten deep in the surrounding woods. Mom and Dad Heelshire need a nanny to take care of their son as they go on a much needed vacation away from--their son. They introduce 8 year old Brahms to her, but he's a life-sized porcelain doll, neatly dressed and somewhat melancholy in expression.

She laughs. They look appalled. She realizes they are serious. She settles in. Greta needed to get away so she has little choice. The grocery man, Malcolm (Rupert Evans), warms up to her and explains the background of Brahms and his parents. He gives Greta the pub gossip version and the regular gentrified version, and both tend toward providing just enough information for us to know there's something odd going on with the Heelshire's and their very odd son: the porcelain one and the real one.

The Heelshire's (Jim Norton and Diana Hardcastle) look tired, on edge, and desperate to leave the mansion. Mrs. Heelshire apologizes to Greta for leaving her alone with Brahms. A hint that maybe the other nannies they hired had their hands full and then some. The list of to do items, left behind, directs Greta to play music, make sure the boy is fed, dress him for bed with a goodnight kiss, read aloud to him, and do all the things you would normally do if he were a living boy.

But he's a porcelain doll so of course Greta gives up the listed duties a short time after the Heelshires have left. That's when strange things begin to happen. As Stacy Menear (writer) and William Brent Bell (director) mix in the hoary horror elements amid the splendidly brooding images of the mansion's animal carvings, hallway windings, and cloistered presence in the forest, away from neighbors and town life. Greta begins to suspect that the porcelain Brahms is alive. 

As her suspicion grows, her seclusion and avoidance of Malcolm's interest in her grows, too. She becomes more protective, more mothering, and starts adhering to that list of duties with unwavering determination. But then her reason for leaving the States catches up with her, forcing Brahms and his mysterious story into a new direction. 

While Menear's story resorts to too many overly seen tricks of the horror trade, without twisting them in non-traditional or quirky new ways, she does provide a kick in your seat moment as Brahms and Greta's pasts knock into each other. You will either like it or hate it, but it provides a direction that's not expected. For fans of, and those not familiar with, Lauren Cohan, she's very good at making the story work beyond the simple premise of "our son, the life-sized porcelain doll" and keeps to the fine line between histrionics, vulnerability, and assuredness.

Not so welcomed is the sequelantic ending tacked on beyond the perfectly good one. It's the kind that screams "not dead yet!" while ruining the natural denouement. I will say that there's a lot of backstory here that's left to imagination or future sequels, but I would have preferred a less blatantly commercial ending here. The story's mysteries are sufficient enough to spark a revisit, should the movie's box office mojo allow.

WFA 2015 Horror Nominees The Short of It

Thanks to a nudge from author James Chambers (he's also head honcho for the New York Chapter of the Horror Writers Association), I had the opportunity to watch the horror entries for the Winter Film Awards 2015 (http://winterfilmawards.com/) in preparation for judging, and I must say almost every entry is fresh and engaging in direction and storyline. Here's the kit and kaboodle in one take.

My favorite is the 23 minute Tokyo Halloween Night by Mari Okada (http://www.momomatsuri.com/2013/tokyohalloweennight.html). A delightful, and cheeky, fantasy that brings together a very unhappy scarecrow and a very lonely zombie for one Halloween night, it's playful with its visual and narrative texts, in both style and scripting. With her balance between horror elements and whimsy, Okada brings a fun film that's part storybook, part social commentary, and all horror comedy. I can easily see this short being developed into a full-length movie. (See Mari Okada here: http://vimeo.com/user16899819)

At 82 minutes running time, The Redwood Massacre gore-mess by director David Ryan Keith, is the longest entry in the WFA 2015 horror nominee pool. It's also the least satisfying. Unstoppable serial-killing machine (been there), heads sawed open with rusty blades (okay, that's really disturbing!), sharp weapons wielded with aplomb (no one ever ducks anymore?), and the mostly comatose-minded victims meandering into the killer's warren, leave this movie a slowly paced, albeit energetically gory, slice of the same-old, same-old. Faster pacing, inspired scripting, and a focal point extending beyond the bloody closeups would have benefitted this one and us.

The 3 minute Institutionalized, by director Roy Schweiger, is a strange, evocative, and bewildering 19 still image conversion into moving frames. A fashion statement, a mind-blown statement, and a statement I can't quite put my finger on, there's a weirdness filtering throughout. His Milan-based beauty and fashion photography background is brought foreground here, creating a short entry into the disturbing for you. (http://vimeo.com/92082037).

Director Marc Martínez Jordán's Timothy,(https://www.facebook.com/pages/Timothy-the-shortfilm/584999148225915), is a 10 minute horror short about a boy, his bossy sitter, and a kids show the boy likes to watch, with a cartoon-voiced, and really big bunny named Timothy (if you're okay with a person dressed up as a funny fuzzy bunny, that is) as its host. All three meld together in one evening of mayhem. I would point you to a Goosebumps episode where the kids show host pops out of the TV for an idea of what's happening, but then I'd be a bit wrong because..well, I'll leave that up to you to find out. A good short, not entirely original or fresh, but the direction, production values, and atmosphere are executed as well as the victim. What's very interesting here is how Jordan takes a Japanese horror trope--the creepazoid person-animal-thing--and makes it his own. I can see why this entry is in the Winter Film Awards for 2015.

Cynthia, by Christopher Wells, is 11 minutes of hell. It's who's hell I'll leave for you to figure out. Of course the main character is the prime suspect, and there's the devil to pay (actually, he is waiting for payment, apparently), and a woman who is hanging around (double meaning alert!), with a computer as the main complaint, or instigator, or excuse. I get the feeling Wells is drawing on personal experience here. Brisk editing, short sour moments, and key visuals to fill in just enough of the backstory, make this a traditional horror themed play on guilt, condemnation, and no reconciliation possible. It plays like a Reefer Madness for computer-addicted users. I feel so guilty after watching it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aei_tOBPsWI)

Yung-Jen Yang's Sweet Sixteen is 9 minutes of birthday party and dreadful circumstance. But some of it seems to have been lost in translation. There's Haley, an adopted Chinese girl, who wants to know who her biological mother is. Simple. Or not. There's a little vengeance spirit holding a grudge angle here, so we know there's a sinister secret waiting to be discovered. Or not. There's a flashback, or flash ahead, and a sharp cake knife handled in the wrong way. Or not. More here is needed to understand, but these 9 minutes aren't quite enough to flesh out the picture Yang is drawing for us. So count this one interesting but incomplete. Of all the nominees, this one needed another minute or two of backstory, or future story, to help it sink into our psyche. (http://sweet16yang.wix.com/yungjenyang#!sweet-sixteen/c1amd)

I can try and explain The Jelly Wrestler but you wouldn't believe me. I can say, though, that, working in a bar in Brooklyn (well back when), I can understand, even accept, the premise, the angst, and the sticky squish. I'm not even sure if this is an official entry, but it appears on the nominees page, just only it looks like an afterthought, or maybe a late addition, so it's fair game. The horror comes in at the end, or maybe it's there all the time. I'll let you decide. It's directed by Rebecca Thomson and written by Claire D'Este, and there's something a little delirious, something a lot serious about this 14 minute story of Eileen, a former Queen of the Gelatine, barmaid who's getting too old, too bitter, and too brushed-aside. She's also a very sore loser. (http://www.rebeccathomson.com.au/#!the-jelly-wrestler/cj7j). Don't miss this one. I can't say why you shouldn't (still wondering myself), but just don't miss it.

Movie Review: House of Dark Shadows (1970) A Story of Blood Relations

Walk with me, won’t you?

My mom and I are heading to the Benson Theater on 86^th Street. We are in Bensonhurst Brooklyn, in New York. The year is 1970, or so, and the day’s light is waning as the evening presses down. The walk is not too far to the Benson and the best thing is that across the street is the Loew’s Oriental Theater, so we always have a choice of movies to see. The Benson isn't ornate like the Loew’s though, just your screen and seats basics, but we do catch a lot of wonderful horror movies there.

I’ll never forget when we saw Vincent Price in The Abominable Doctor Phibes because the theater’s air-conditioning wasn't working that particular summer’s night. It was hot sitting there in the dark. They even kept the front doors open to help cool down the place but that made it noisy every time the elevated train that ran along 86^th street screeched past.

But I digress. Memories can do that to you, you know.

We have our tickets! With our popcorn and Cokes we sit in the middle row, about center to the screen. We aren't sitting in the balcony this time around. Man, I love sitting in the balcony; any theater’s balcony for that matter. Tonight we are seeing House of Dark Shadows, the only soap opera my mom and I love watching. Shh! What a pleasure it is not seeing screen messages to turn off cell phones, don't text during the movie, don't read your tweets, don't talk with your mouth full, and--but this is 1970, or so, and...

 

...Like countless other kids of my generation, I ran home after school, every day, to watch a soap opera that even I could love, Dark Shadows, on television. Now it was a movie! Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas Collins would bare his fangs on the big screen, more blood would flow from his attacks, vividly red blood to boot, and the story’s episodic arc of vengeful curse, supernatural circumstance, and the narrow halls of Collinwood, filled with the dark shadows of Collins Family history, would be hammered into a running time of ninety-seven minutes. Not constrained by television’s censorship, the vampire attacks would be more horrific and the scenes more expansive and atmospheric. I was ecstatic with anticipation.

At first, Dan Curtis, the creator of the series and now director of the movie, envisioned editing “already existing television video material into a full-length feature, as had been previously done with the Man From Uncle, but the complexities of the Dark Shadows storyline would not permit an easy edit for the screen.” (The Dark Shadows Companion). Nor would the video quality variations and continuity problems make it an easy or convincing fit with newly filmed material anyway. Then, finding backers for the movie proved a hard sell. ABC refused to back their own show, even though they were loving the television series audience of 15,000,000 viewers. One misguided producer even recommended recasting the television series stars with other stars, even though David Selby (who played Quentin Collins, another cursed soul in the series) could “draw a million kids to shopping centers.” He played a werewolf, that's why. After Curtis spent two years of shopping the movie around Hollywood, the newly-installed president of MGM, James Aubrey, said “Let’s go,--what the devil are we waiting for?” (TDSC)

Filming the movie over 5 weeks while the television series continued to air was a challenge. On television, the alternate universe storyline, Parallel Time, introduced new characters and provided various plot devices that covered the necessary absence of actors appearing in House. Barnabas was chained in a coffin on television while he roamed free in his cinematic incarnation. That incarnation would be more evil and less sympathetic than the soap opera one, taking its cue from the early days of Barnabas’s entry into the television series to spark flagging ratings. Then, and for the movie, he was “a darker, more Hammeresque vampire Barnabas with no mitigating providence to steer him from his eventual end.” (TDSC) Perhaps this is why ratings for the series dropped a short time after the very successful movie painted a more brutal and evil antagonistic vampire than what viewers of the television show were happier with? Or perhaps because Curtis killed off just about everybody in the movie? Awkward.

The Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, New York, would become the new Collinwood. Curtis, his production team, and the actors had to film around the regularly scheduled tours of visitors to the mansion (a National Historic Trust site), but its period rooms made it worth doing so. Money was saved on props and decor because the mansion was already furnished with priceless antiques, rich furniture, evocative paintings, and enough dark shadows of its own to give House an elegance well beyond its small budget. An hour’s drive from Manhattan also made it an easy location to get to for the actors.

Shooting began on March 23, 1970, at the Sleepy Hollow cemetery a few miles away, where an existing mausoleum was dressed over with the Collins Family name. Shooting Carolyn’s funeral there proved a bit more of a challenge than anticipated. A grave diggers strike had caused bodies to be piled into a building needed for shooting. Non-union workers were hired to tackle the growing piles of corpses, but their constant interruptions to carry the corpses out of the building prompted Curtis to finally plead “Can you do that later, please, it’s not like they’re going anywhere.” (The Dark Shadows Movie Book) Additional sets were fashioned out of Lyndhurst’s rooms. The kitchen became Dr. Julia Hoffman’s  laboratory (how can you forget staccato-voiced Grayson Hall?), where she worked at finding a cure for Barnabas’s vampirism (it was a virus! Like the one in House of Dracula. I wonder if she was related to Dr. Edelmann?). The basement became the wardrobe department, and the souvenir shop was taken over by the make-up team. (TDSMB)

The interior crypt scene where Willie Loomis (John Karlen) goes to find treasure, but finds Barnabas’s hand suddenly around his startled throat instead, was shot in an exterior building on the Lyndhurst grounds. Curtis shot 9 hours a day, barring interruptions from the weather, which proved colder and wetter than they expected, and shot day-for-night for the night scenes. While the resulting look on film is obvious, shooting that way did save time and money as night-time shooting requires more set up and lighting considerations. Kathryn Leigh Scott, in her Maggie’s House of Dark Shadows Diary, gives a little insight into Curtis’s directing style: “During the break, I overhear the camera crew talking. One of them says Dan has a great way of bringing unity to the set—everyone hates him. And this is the first day?” (TDSMB) John Karlen had kinder words for Curtis, calling him a good actors director.

The Old House, where Barnabas takes up residence, forcing Willie to restore it to its former glory, was a location at the Schoales Estate in Connecticut. It is here that Carolyn, in a fit of jealousy, invokes Barnabas’s anger and vampiric fury as Willie helplessly looks on. Her subsequent rise as vampire leads to one of the movie’s highlights in its staging and execution, bringing to mind a hint of the Hammer aesthetic. She is eventually cornered by police officers brandishing crosses, overpowered, and held down as Professor Stokes (Thayer David) hammers a stake through her heart. Watch this scene closely; you will notice Curtis cuts away just before Stokes brings the hammer down on the stake, then cuts to the stake in her chest, with suitably bloody results. Thayer David would not hit the stake hard enough, so after numerous takes Curtis gave up pleading with him to hit the bloody thing harder and decided to get the best take he had and fudge it with editing. Lost in the editing, also, was why the police suddenly become believers in vampires.

Perhaps more noticeable than it should be is Curtis’s approach to editing, with additional help from film editor Arline Garson (although her only editing credit on IMDb is for The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966). An odd thing happens as you watch the story unfold past the first 21 minutes. Scenes are cut so that they don’t quite match in spacial and time relationships, appearing too brief in some cases. It’s as if Curtis decided to trim seconds here and there, but instead of tightening the pacing and reinforcing the structural logic of events, he causes a hiccup effect, making his match cuts almost appear to be jump cuts. Dark Shadows fans could easily fill in the fractional timing gaps with their memories of the television series. New viewers may find the editing a bit disconcerting. Overall, it creates a rushed story that could have used a few more minutes to flesh out events more clearly. The studio didn't pressure him to shrink the movie's running time, that would come later with Night of Dark Shadows. Perhaps Curtis, coming from television, subconsciously worried about bridging through non-existent commercials?

One cannot mention the Dark Shadows movie without bringing up Dick Smith’s wonderful makeup effect for the aging Barnabas (a favorite scene for monster magazines of the day). After Julia becomes miffed at his preferring Maggie over her, she slips a mickey into his hypodermic needle used to deliver his anti-vampire dose. This causes Barnabas to age to his true life span of 200 years in a few seconds. Of course, he still has enough energy to throttle Julia to death with his withered hands in his rage. To accomplish the extreme aging for Jonathan Frid, Smith used the bald cap he designed for Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man, then, under Curtis’s suggestions, added a stronger veiny and mottled look to Frid’s facial features; more effort was put into this effect than was done in the series episode that showed the same plot twist. The transformation effect is startling. Combined with Robert Colbert’s signature music for the series, with additional scoring taken from his The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Hyde (1968), it works perfectly. Curtis insisted Colbert, who wanted to do original music for the movie, use his previous work instead. Curtis even went so far as to edit to the pre-scored music, which may account for the jarring match cuts.

 

“At a boy, Willie!” yells my mom to the theater screen as we watch House of Dark Shadows. Willie is doing his best at being Willie (helpless and frantic) and she enjoys watching him sweat. But Willie redeems himself at the end, driving a really big arrow bolt into Barnabas’s back and up through his chest. The scene unfolds in slow motion, the music is poured on, and soon the credits roll. Hey, what’s that bat doing flying out of the spot where Barnabas collapsed? Does that mean a sequel! Sadly, the planned sequel wound up like so many ideas in Hollywood: somewhere between the bedroom and the driveway, and a different story took over the next Dark Shadows movie.

We leave the theater, fully satisfied, and looking forward to the next horror movie to play at the Benson. Well, okay, maybe not Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster, but sure, any other horror movie. What? You need to head back ? Okay. Thanks for joining us.

Let’s get together again real soon.

The following essential books were quoted from and used as reference in writing this article: The Dark Shadows Companion: 25^th Anniversary Collection, edited by Kathryn Leigh Scott; and the Dark Shadows Movie Book, edited by Kathryn Leigh Scott and Jim Pierson. I highly recommend. 

DVD Review: Annabelle (2014)

Zombos Says: Good

"Well, it is about time," said Zombos.

He had been away on vacation, some sort of trip around the world as he termed it. For me it was a blissful vacation not having him underfoot. But now he was back. Nothing truly good and enjoyable ever lasts, does it?

"Time for what? I countered. I was a bit rusty with him being away for so long, but my mental machinery was slowly beginning to hiss as it built up steam.

"Why, time you got back to writing my boy. What is all this nonsense with posting scans of this and that? You have grown lazy while I have been away. Time for some meaty review or insightful observation, or perhaps even a rant or two, instead of another lobby card or magazine or movie pressbook or--."

"Those scans of this and that, as you so blithely put it, are our history old chap. Mine, yours, ours. Monsterkid history. From the vaults of memory history. You know, the stuff fond memories are made of. Otherwise known as nostalgia for older horror fans, and maybe an introduction to such wonders for those who grew up much later."

He opened his mouth to respond. Chef Machiavelli interrupted with a tray full of pistachio cannolis and a pot of his angelic espresso (you know, one cup of it and you're in heaven). We quickly both agreed to disagree between bites and sips.

"And I haven't been all that unmindful. Here's my review of Annabelle," I said. 

"Splendid." He settled into his wingback armchair. His long, thin arms came to rest in their comfortable positions across its armrests. I jotted a mental note to have the chair reupholstered; its armrests, now threadbare and shiny in spots, needed attention.

"Let me hear all about it," he said, as he took another sip from his cup.

 

I didnt' see Annabelle in a theater. 2014 seemed to be pretty dry in creativity for widely released horror movies and I decided to simply wait and catch it on DVD. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment graciously offered their DVD+Blu-ray discs for review. I said yes. Of course.

You'll want to pop in the Blu-ray disc, it has all the featurettes, although I found each one of them too short in running time for my inquisitive and seasoned (okay, jaded) mind; but sure, they still are pertinent and worth watching. Especially the deleted scenes from the movie and the descriptions of the makeup work on the demon. A funny moment pops up while the effects team discusses the preparation of Annabelle's dolly companions for their full-blown demonic hazing. Other deleted scenes show how the storyline had changed during editing, forcing the deletions.

Looking at the designs for both demon and doll, they show a careful artistic balance between the demon's gargoyle (aka woodcut) looks and the not-quite-sinister-but-damn-she's-a-little-off Annabelle that you can appreciate. Both look ghastly when you take a long hard look, and the movie's terror easily flows from their visual and narrative suspense. Having the Annabelle doll become the conduit for the demon's evil makes it a terrible plaything in more ways than just looks. I still can't believe anyone in their right mind would go near a doll that looked like Annabelle unless they had a few stiff drinks beforehand. And were nearsighted. And probably didn't like the person they were giving the doll to.

But I'm referring to the reel doll, not the real one (see the picture), of course. As the movie progresses, Annabelle's porcelain face turns darker and her lighting and coloration more ominous as she gets her sinister on, while her already alarming smirk, grows smirkier by the minute, or seems to, making you wait for her to say something you really don't want to hear. Thank god she doesn't have a pull-string. I'm not sure who's scariest among cinema's terrible dolls such as the Saw and Dead Silence Billies, or Chucky and Tiffany, or Talky Tina, to name some of them, but that unblinking stare of Annabelle is probably the most deftly executed compression of horrifying countenance hidden in an almost pretty face; and she has Hell on her side, so there's your win-win for mayhem and scares.

And that's when you realize, and a pleasant surprise it is, that director John R. Leonetti does more with less, greatly increasing the movie's impact. Easy jump scares are replaced by a more studied atmosphere of growing doom and gloom (like the one you find in the original Omen), and he even dares to do a long take that makes the origin of the doll's cursed existence a stylish treat as much as it is a brisk-paced blood-letting (without egregious gore). Lingering closeups of Annabelle's eyes makes you wonder when they will move, and seeing Annabelle sitting in a rocking chair, or on the shelf, makes you watchful for any sudden movement. Of course she doesn't wink, blink, or deliver epigrammatic barbs like Freddy, or even move a ponytail; except for one scene where she does move, but it's what's behind her that's more scary.

The deleted scenes show what didn't make it to the final cut. One can understand why the building's creepy handyman character was removed (pointless for the narrative), and why two incidents involving the baby were also left out. The first, which includes many cats, is visually arresting, but off premise with the rest of the storyline (it happens, it's weird, so what?), but the second generates some real goosebumps. It involves baby's bath time and danger. I'm sorry it didn't make the final cut: it's that strong. But keeping it in would have probably upset a lot of audience members, and undermine the demon's purpose (a soul to need, to a demon will feed kind of purpose).

The demonic and satanic cult aspects of the movie are framed by a surfeit of Catholic faith, which almost becomes cloying and preaching when Father Perez (Tony Amendola) ponders the glory of motherhood as worried mom, Mia (Annabelle Wallis), listens distractedly. Scripter Gary Dauberman's ponderously preachy dialog takes on a pandering-weight, and Leonetti dwells on it in one or two scenes, forcing his actors to the speaking cadence you see in those corporate training shorts many employees have suffered to watch with a game face.

There's the "problematic racial function" provided by Ruby (Alfre Woodard), the bookstore owner, as described by Inkoo Kang, in her review of Annabelle for The Wrap, that warrants further academic exploration. Later. I'm not sure why Dauberman resorts to it, but it is noticeable. Like all those red shirted, landing party, classic Star Trek personnel going to their doom, we know what's coming. But then he uses a more carefully crafted approach by injecting those 1960s notions of womanhood, realized through Mia's husband (Ward Horton): Mia is imagining things because she's going through postpartum depression. A few drugs and seeing a shrink, in between watching soap operas on television, should cure her.

Lucky for us Father Perez believes in evil. And demons.

Movie Review: As Above, So Below (2014)

Zombos Says: Very Good

Before you see this refreshingly artful exercise in claustrophobic mayhem--the accurately but poorly titled As Above, So Below--brush up on your Nicolas Flamel and alchemy history beforehand. And you may want to take some headache-relief in advance, since the enthusiastic point-of-views and shaky-camera in this mockumentary horror may give you a beaut.

The story is seen through the de rigueur determined camera operator who keeps filming no matter what happens, (Edwin Hodge fills that role as Benji), and his pinhole cameras, worn near the headlamps of archaeological adventurers Scarlett (Perdita Weeks) and George (Ben Feldman) as they dare the Paris Catacombs' unexplored regions. So expect much close proximity blurring and corner of the camera eye terror-flashes, as well as a modicum of incoherence in the audio and the action as per this now overused and unnecessary, but versatile, cost-cutting conceit. (Relatively speaking, of course: but its $5,000,000 budget has grossed $13,000,000 so far.)

I also recommend you ignore Metacritics and Rotten Tomatoes: their movie ratings are irrelevant and off the mark as usual. I don't understand why anyone with a mind of his or her own would even bother with these useless vestigial websites unless the interest is one more of socializing with the herd than reading actual film analysis and earnest reviews. Yes, the usual illogically better-than-to-be-expected cinematography ensues from the use of a limited handheld camera and those micro ones, but this is, after all, a horror movie and you're watching it to be scared. More importantly, keep in mind this is not a found-footage movie. I keep seeing this mentioned in various reviews and it's incorrect. I realized it wasn't found-footage two-thirds into the deepening pile of bones and unexplored passageways our catacomb explorers were getting themselves more deeply lost in. In no credible way would their cameras ever be found to make this a found-footage movie; a realization that adds a little more intrigue and alters expectations for the better.

Scarlett is searching for the Philosopher's Stone and Nicolas Flamel (Harry Potter fans will recognize the name) provides the clues to its whereabouts through his tombstone. Like Mikey in the Goonies and Professor Jones in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, she's determined to let nothing stop her in her life's goal; not the Paris Catacombs and their mounds of skulls and bones, or the potentially pesky rats scurrying through them, or the stifling, endless creepy corridors she's warned to stay out of. Inevitably they are herded into one particular dusty, ancient, chamber foreshadowed by its warning "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here) etched into the narrow entrance. Gulp.

Director John Eric Dowdle (Quarantine) has a knack for enabling goal-driven women in supernatural storylines to reach beyond the typical bosom-bouncing scream queen falderol. Scarlett holds a few PhDs, speaks four languages, and she is so persuasive she even convinces her former boyfriend, George, who's still smarting from when she abandoned him to incarceration in a Turkish prison, to accompany her. George provides important translations and a calming effect to her rambunctious jump-in-then-look approach to tackling challenges. And, gosh, they still do love each other; once they stop yelling at each other. 

The hook comes through what each person encounters in the catacombs and what lies farther below: a hint is that personal inner demons feed everyone's encounters with the supernatural; an unexpected upright piano with a dead key and a rotary phone appear, though wildly out of place in such morbid surroundings; the movie's trailer shows a flaming car that spoils a critical moment that's not fully explained (at least not in one viewing); a hooded figure sitting on a wooden throne in the pitch dark suddenly decides to take a walk; the walls come alive and bite hard. More character insight and a little more time to help us pay attention to it should have been added to the script. Traps, copious blood-letting, face-mashing, a long drop with a sudden stop, and all those character-driven bedevilments pop up with the rapidity of a haunt attraction, leaving us and everyone else breathless. Benji, who clearly needs to lose weight before tackling tight places, wedges tight among the bones. As he panics, so do we. Those little squeaky noises at his butt don't help lessen his hyperventilation, or ours for that matter.

It's hard to say if As Above, So Below will boost the Paris Catacombs tourist trade or dampen it, but I hope to see more of Scarlett and George. This may be the start of a beautiful horror franchise.

DVD Review: The Exorcist 40th Anniversary Blu-ray

Zombos Says: Excellent mix of movie versions and features in one set.

Not having watched the extended director's cut or original theatrical version blu-ray editions previously released, this 40th anniversary set from Warners Home Video, adding two new special features on a third disc and a snippet from William Friedkin's book The Friedkin Connection, is a superb way to re-experience the artistry of The Exorcist, one of the top 5 horror movies made.

One of the new additions is Beyond Comprehension: William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. Blatty, former comedy writer (good luck with that career after this movie hit), now famous horror author and screenwriter, takes us on a tour of old haunts. Our first stop is the guest house he eventually settled into, with mass quantities of coffee and cigarettes, to write his novel. He explains the few false starts that led him there; for instance, his first choice of writing milieu was a beachfront abode, but noisy cresting waves were too distracting for him. Throughout, Blatty keeps a  wowser! how lucky was I attitude that pops up a little too often to remain fresh, especially at times when more revealing exposition on the process of how he got that lucky would have been appreciated (and yes, that's the writer side of me pointing fingers here, of course). One startling revelation: he didn't have an outlined plot and worried he would eventually write himself into a corner. I recall Charles Dicken's never outlined his novels, either. (Lucky bastards, the both of them.)

The impetus for the novel and its memorable terrors was a true-life case of exorcism that ocurred in 1949, which both Friedkin (in his in-depth commentary for the movie and his book) and Blatty refer back to, often. The second new addition is a 20 or so minute chat with Father Eugene Gallagher, who talks about Blatty's time at Georgetown University and that 1949 case, and the exorcism rite itself. This is an informal, filmed in black and white, interview conducted at the time the movie was first scaring audiences, so the set up is minimal, the hair of the interviewer long (radio talk show host Mike Siegel), making it more suited to diehard religious or Exorcist fans with less itchy trigger fingers on their remotes.

The effectively teasing snippet from Friedkin's book, where he relates his experiences with the movie and Blatty, is contained in a hard cover booklet that fits neatly into the cardboard slipcase along with the DVD jacket. It's a revealing nugget of information that compelled me to get Friedkin's book. It also makes you wonder where horror's gotten off to, after such a promising decade in which it received stellar attention from topnotch directors and actors and writers. 

Those of you who have watched the previous blu-ray versions will already know how crisp and vibrant the viewing is, and how rewarding Friedkin's scene by scene commentary can be--I didn't realize until he pointed it out how he used the subtlety of having Father Karras rising (ascending) in his scenes--and how much the documentaries Raising Hell: Filming the Exorcist and The Fear of God: The Making of the Exorcist make you appreciate the nuts and bolts that, finally assembled into the movie, deliver a jolt of character-driven dramatic tension and release you don't often see in today's horror movies.

I can't really say which version I prefer, original or extended cut. The original 1973 showing is the one that made The Exorcist a classic. It's also the one I remember getting the willies from, sitting in a theater in with a whole bunch of other people getting the willies, too. On one hand the original is concisely executed, but on the other the additional 12 minutes have their moments. Some of them include the overly done subliminal flashes of the demon's face, but others reinforce the dual horrors of the medical examinations and the demon's possession , like Regan's jarring crab walk down the stairs. Thank god the technology back then wasn't ready for it: had I seen that in 1973 I don't think I'd have slept a wink for weeks afterwards.